The Lending Library tracks items you loan out and expect back. Before you can lend anything, the item has to exist as a product and have stock behind it. That is two steps, and this article covers both.

Step 1: add the item as a product

1. Choose Products & Inventory > Products from the menu on the left.
2. Click Add New. Argenta creates the product and opens the Product Workspace on Product Details.
3. Fill in the three required fields, each marked with an orange asterisk: Product Name, Vendor Cost, and Unit of Measure.
4. Turn on Product Can Be Lent Out. This is the switch that makes the item available to the Lending Library, and it is the one people forget.
5. Leave Active Product on, and turn on Track In Inventory so the item is counted.
6. Click Save All Changes & Continue or Save All Changes & Exit.

Repeat for each item you want to lend.

Fields worth filling in for lending

• Vendor is required on every product. If you bought the item purely to lend and there is no real supplier, add your own organization as a vendor and use that. See Add Vendors.
• Serial Number earns its keep here. When a borrower returns a piece of equipment, the serial number is how you confirm you got the same one back.
• Vendor's Product Number for the supplier's part number.
• Product Description, Product Group, Product Type, and Product Category to organize the catalog.
• Par Level for the minimum quantity you want on hand.

If you sell the item as well as lend it, turn on Product Is for Resale, which makes Your Retail Price editable and required.

Step 2: give the items a quantity

A product record on its own has no stock, so a brand new product cannot be lent yet.

1. Go to Products & Inventory > Product Inventory.
2. Click Add Inventory Manually. This opens Argenta Inventory Management, Add Inventory With No Vendor Order, which lists your products on one screen.
3. Enter the QTY for each item you are stocking. You can do them all in one pass.
4. Click Add These Items, which sits at both the top and the bottom of the list.

You land back on Product Inventory with the quantities in place. If you ordered the items from a vendor instead, fulfilling that order adds them for you. See Add Product Order.

Now you can lend

With the products created and stocked, you are ready to loan them out. See Using the Lending Library.